26th October 2023

Altruism and Prosocial Behaviour

The Encyclopaedia Britannica defines altruism as ‘Feelings and behaviour that show a desire to help other people and a lack of selfishness.’

It is one of the core motivators for prosocial actions and can often involve a cost to yourself; whether that is an obvious act of sacrifice (e.g. giving your own lunch to someone who is hungry) or more indirect (e.g. choosing to volunteer and then give up time that you might have been resting or watching Netflix).

Interestingly, altruism is something that does not always make biological or evolutionary sense. It can be adaptive in terms of encouraging others to be kind in return, but arguably, for altruism to be truly altruistic, it has to be carried out with no expectation of reward or reciprocation.

It can sometimes be hard to separate a kind act as part of altruism from a kind act that is carried out for more selfish reasons (and, in the real world, only the person carrying out the act can TRULY know what is motivating them). I find the table below helpful in separating the two main types of prosocial behaviour.

In reality, there will always be an element of selfishness in our kindness (even just that it increases our self-esteem or makes us feel good to be kind), but that is definitely too philosophical for our Paper A revision!

A uniquely human trait?

There has been a lot of controversy around whether or not altruism is unique to humans.

Experiments have clearly demonstrated other species showing prosocial behaviour, and it is widely accepted that various animals are likely to help others when there is no negative consequence for themselves.

However, interestingly, some studies have suggested that pro-social behaviour may no longer occur when a cost to self is introduced. Sterck, Olesen and Massen conducted a study with macaques involving low and high reward foods: if a macaque pulled one lever, they provided food to a sibling or child in an adjacent room (they received cucumber (low value) while their relative received a peanut (high value). The alternative lever for the macaques to pull provided the peanut to themselves and nothing to their relative, and this second lever was consistently selected by the macaques in the study. This suggested that prosocial or altruistic behaviour can be reduced in the presence of cost to self, which supports the idea that true altruism is unique to humans.

This could be true, or it could be our bias; after all, we are the ones investigating and would like to think that we are the most altruistic of species…

References

• Farsides T. The psychology of altruism [online]. The British Psychological Society: 2007. Available from URL: https://www.bps.org.uk/psychologist/psychology-altruism [Accessed Jan 2023]
• Batson, C.D., Fultz, J., Schoenrade, P.A. & Paduano, A. (1987). Critical self-reflection and self-perceived altruism. J. Pers. Soc. Psychol. 1987; 53:594–602.
• Hoffman M. Empathy and moral development: implications for caring and justice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; 2000.
• Sterck E, Olesen C, Massen J. No Costly Prosociality Among Related Long-Tailed Macaques (Macaca fascicularis). J Comparative Psychology. 2015; 129(3):275–282